Welcome

Greetings,

As Mayor and on behalf of the City of Chicago, I invite you to participate in the Fall 2010 One Book, One Chicago program. This award-winning program encourages all Chicagoans to come together with friends and neighbors to share and discuss a great work of literature.

This fall, One Book, One Chicago celebrates the most recent novel by literary icon Toni Morrison. A Mercy is the story of a group of individuals brought together in the wilderness of America in the 1680s—from the young slave girl who was given up by her mother and is struggling to come of age, to the Native American woman who takes her under her wing, to the Anglo-Dutch landowner who comes to America to farm but is drawn to the rum trade and the promise of wealth.

A Mercy provides an opportunity to look into the often horrific early days of America, with its realities of slavery, religious persecution, mistreatment of Native Americans, and the hardship of disease, in order to define the America of today and to create a better future. Toni Morrison, the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature, is a master storyteller and an American intellectual whose work will be treasured for centuries to come.

You can find a copy of A Mercy at your neighborhood Chicago Public Library or local bookstore. Please take part in one of the many book discussions planned in libraries, bookstores, community centers and universities throughout October and join us for any number of events celebrating the book this fall, including the opening event on September 7 where you can get a free copy of the book, and an appearance by Professor Morrison on October 19 at Symphony Center.

Sincerely,

Richard M. Daley
Mayor